Drivers whose regular vehicles are disabled as a result of accidents or otherwise will often need to engage a rental vehicle while their regular vehicles are disabled. As the term is used herein, a vehicle may become disabled by either the driver having had an accident, thereby causing damage for a repair facility (e.g., body shop, mechanic, etc.) to fix, or by simply through mechanical failure, maintenance, or other similar desires or needs for changes requiring the custody of the vehicle to be relinquished to a repair facility. In many instances, an insurance company, automobile dealer, or fleet company will provide a rental vehicle to such drivers as part of the services provided through automobile insurance policies, dealer service policies, or fleet service policies. Such rental vehicles are referred to herein as “replacement rental vehicles” or “replacement vehicles”. Replacement rental vehicles represent an important source of business for rental vehicle service providers given the large volumes of drivers whose regular vehicles become disabled (i.e., not fully operative) as a result of accidents, mechanical breakdowns, and other causes.
In this business chain, there are four primary parties—the first is the driver whose vehicle becomes disabled (thereby creating a need for a rental vehicle), the second is the purchaser of rental vehicle services who books a rental vehicle reservation on behalf of the driver (typically an insurance company, automobile dealer, etc.), the third is the rental vehicle service provider with which the purchaser books the rental vehicle reservation, and the fourth is the repair facility/body shop where the driver's disabled vehicle is repaired.
Given that the purchaser in this business chain often bears all or a portion of the costs for the rental vehicle reservation, the purchaser is highly desirous of business partners (namely, rental vehicle service providers and repair facilities) that can provide their services in a cost-efficient manner. Thus, it is desirable for rental vehicle service providers to coordinate their services with repair facilities such that drivers and purchasers can be promptly notified when repairs to the disabled vehicles have been completed and the need for the rental vehicle services have ended. By doing so, purchasers can reduce the number of instances where they unnecessarily pay for additional days of rental vehicle services, which given the high volume nature of the replacement rental vehicle business can have a significant effect on purchasers' bottomlines.
In an effort to serve the needs of purchasers, the assignee of the present invention has pioneered the development of business systems that can be used by purchasers to create and efficiently manage replacement rental vehicle reservations, as described in pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. (1) 09/641,820, filed Aug. 18, 2000, (2) 09/694,050, filed Oct. 20, 2000, (3) 10/028,073, filed Dec. 26, 2001, and published as 2003/0125992, (4) 10/865,116, filed Jun. 10, 2004, and published as 2005/0091087, (5) 60/828,540, filed Oct. 6, 2006, (6) 11/550,614, filed Oct. 18, 2006, and published as 2008/0097798, and (7) 11/609,844, filed Dec. 12, 2006, and published as 2007/0174081, and in PCT patent application PCT/US01/51437, filed Oct. 19, 2001, published as WO 02/067175, and for which U.S. national phase application Ser. No. 10/343,576 is currently pending. The entire disclosures of each of these patent applications are incorporated herein by reference.
With the preferred embodiment of the present invention, the inventors herein have further extended these pioneering efforts by increasing the automation with which term-related parameters of rental vehicle reservations can be managed by a computer system. As used herein, the phrase “term-related parameters” can be defined as those data elements of a rental vehicle reservation that are temporal in nature. Examples of term-related parameters for reservations whose values can be automatically computed in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the present invention include any or all of the following: (1) a target number of days (TD), which represents an estimate of the time needed by a repair facility to complete repairs to a disabled vehicle corresponding to a rental vehicle reservation, (2) a target completion date (TCD), which represents an estimation of the date on which a repair facility will complete repairs to a disabled vehicle corresponding to a rental vehicle reservation, (3) an authorization period for a rental vehicle reservation, which represents how long a purchaser has authorized a driver to rent a rental vehicle in accordance therewith, (4) a last authorized day or date (collectively, LAD) for a rental vehicle reservation, which represents the final day/date of the authorization period, and (5) a callback reminder date, which represents a scheduled date for a callback to be performed in connection with a rental vehicle reservation.
A “callback” refers to a communication to a party involved with a rental vehicle reservation to obtain information as to the status of some aspect of a rental vehicle reservation. Callbacks are typically performed at various times throughout the authorized term of a rental vehicle reservation. Callback communications can take the form of electronic data communications (emails, automated data transfers, faxes, etc.) or telephone calls. Callbacks are also preferably categorized into a plurality of different types, such as types that are defined by the recipient of the callback (e.g., repair facility callbacks, driver callbacks, purchaser callbacks, etc.). Callbacks can be performed by any of the parties involved in a rental vehicle reservation, but it is typically the case that a callback will be performed by an employee of the rental vehicle service provider (or by a computer system of the rental vehicle service provider) or by an employee of the purchaser (or by a computer system of the purchaser).
Purchasers such as insurance companies employ large numbers of personnel such as insurance adjusters to perform the day-to-day tasks of creating and managing replacement rental vehicle reservations. Among the burdens on adjusters as part of the reservation management process is deciding upon an appropriate authorization period for each rental vehicle reservation and then taking action to extend the authorization period for rental vehicle reservations as appropriate in the event of delays in repairs to the drivers' damaged vehicles. In addition to these reservation-related burdens, insurance adjusters must also perform a variety of other tasks as part of the insurance claims handling process, such as providing accurate descriptions as to the nature of loss and negotiating with insureds, claimants, and repair facilities regarding issues such as the value of loss and the repair costs. As explained hereinafter, the preferred embodiment of the present invention can greatly alleviate adjusters' rental vehicle reservation-related burdens, thereby allowing them more time to focus on other aspects of the claims process.
It is often the case that adjusters first create a rental vehicle reservation with a rental vehicle service provider before a repair facility has been able to inspect the disabled vehicle corresponding to the reservation. Thus, adjusters, when booking the reservation, will often either set an authorization period for the reservation that is only a rough estimation as to how long the driver will actually need to rent the replacement rental vehicle or set a short authorization period to account for the amount of time expected until repair estimate information becomes available. Given that the adjuster has not yet been informed by the repair facility as to how long repairs may take for the driver's disabled vehicle, such estimations will often need to be revised after the repair facility provides the adjuster with a repair estimate for the disabled vehicle. For example, it will often be the case that the repair estimate, when received, will indicate that a longer or shorter authorization period is needed. Furthermore, it may be the case that unexpected delays will occur during the repair process (e.g., parts being on backorder, etc.), in which case another need may arise to increase the authorization period for the reservation. In all of these instances, the adjuster typically needs to stay aware of how repairs are progressing for each damaged vehicle and then make a decision as to what the appropriate authorization period for the reservation should be. As explained hereinafter, the preferred embodiment of the present invention is directed toward improving and, preferably, automating this process from the adjuster's perspective.
To achieve such automation, disclosed herein as a preferred embodiment is a technique, preferably embodied by a software program, for processing vehicle repair data received from repair facilities and corresponding to rental vehicle reservations. Based on the received vehicle repair data, the software program automatically computes the TD and/or TCD for each reservation. Moreover, the software program is preferably configured to automatically update the computed TD and/or TCD values each time new vehicle repair data is received from the repair facility. The software program also preferably computes the TD and/or TCD values on the basis of a formula, wherein the terms of the formula can be defined via a set of purchaser-specific rules.
Furthermore, a software program can also be employed to automatically compute a new authorization period and/or LAD for a reservation based at least in part upon the computed TD and/or TCD values. In doing so, reservations can be automatically extended so that the authorization period and/or LAD therefor corresponds with the TD and/or TCD for repairs to the disabled vehicle. The software program can be configured to automatically update the authorization period and/or LAD each time there is a change in the TCD and/or TD. Moreover, purchaser-specific rules for automatic reservation extensions can be applied to each reservation by the software program to determine whether and for how long a reservation should be automatically extended.
In previous reservation management systems known to the inventors herein, reservation managers themselves have been required to mentally interpret any available vehicle repair data to mentally decide upon the appropriate values for the term-related reservation parameters. The reservation management computer system served merely to document the ultimate management decisions that were mentally reached by the reservation managers for the hundred of thousands of different reservation transactions. While various purchaser guidelines with respect to reservation management may have assisted their decision-making in this regard, reservation managers nevertheless, when using the predecessor systems, were required to fully understand such guidelines and accurately apply those guideline in vast numbers of different fact patterns.
By automating the computation of these term-related parameters for rental vehicle reservations, the preferred embodiment of the present invention can greatly alleviate the reservation management burdens placed on reservation management personnel such as insurance adjusters. Through automated computation of the TD and/or TCD terms, a reservation manager (such as an insurance adjuster) need not sift through various fields of vehicle repair data to estimate how long repairs to the disabled vehicle will take or place telephone calls to repair facilities to learn of how various repairs are progressing. Further still, by automatically computing an authorization period and/or LAD for a reservation based on the computed TD and/or TCD terms, a reservation manager is alleviated from the burden of translating how each TD and/or TCD value affects the reservations corresponding thereto. Moreover, by configuring a software program to automatically extend rental vehicle reservations when certain conditions are met, the preferred embodiment of the present invention relieves a reservation manager from much of the extension-related burdens of managing rental vehicle reservations.
In addition to easing the burdens on reservation managers, the preferred embodiment of the present invention also provides purchasers with consistency and accuracy with respect to how their reservation management policies are implemented because no longer must reservation managers independently evaluate each reservation transaction to mentally decide how the reservation's term-related parameters should be managed. Instead, with the preferred embodiment, purchasers can employ a flexible set of business rules that automatically govern how reservation's term-related parameters are set.
Further still, a software program can also be employed to automatically schedule one or more callback reminders for a reservation in response to changes to the reservation record initiated by an update to a reservation record, such as newly received vehicle repair data. With a scheduled callback reminder, prompted on the day for which the callback reminder is scheduled, a computer system such as a rental vehicle reservation management computer system can notify a user that a particular callback should be made for a reservation. A flexible set of business rules can be used by the software program to automatically schedule callback reminders for specific dates and/or times. Further still, the business rules for scheduling the callback reminders can be customized for any scenario and may be specifically customized for a particular purchaser. For instance, reservations being paid for by ABC insurance company may use different business rules for scheduling callback reminders than those being paid for by XYZ insurance company, depending upon the preferences of each company. In another example, the rules could be customized for different repair facilities.
Such systematic callback scheduling rules are believed to offer a significant improvement to previous business systems wherein the callback reminder scheduling was made at the discretion of the employee who entered the callback reminder. Such manual calendaring of callback reminders can lead to inconsistencies. For instance, some employees would schedule a certain type of callback for 8 days after the rental start for a reservation, while others might schedule the same callback for 10 days after the rental start for a reservation. Even the same employee may through mere inadvertence or inconsistency select different callback frequencies for identical scenarios. Thus, with the automated callback scheduling feature of the preferred embodiment, proper and consistent callbacks can be made for any particular scenario.
Similarly, the inventors herein believe that purchasers will greatly benefit from employing a systematic set of rules for automatically computing term-related reservation parameters such as TCD, TD, authorization period, LAD, and/or callback reminder dates because the use of such systematic rules allows for purchasers to meaningfully audit and evaluate their business practices with respect to setting authorization periods for reservations, choosing the repair facilities to which repair work is sent, and choosing the rental vehicle service providers with which rental vehicle reservations will be booked. Thus, in accordance with another aspect of the preferred embodiment, disclosed herein is a technique, preferably embodied by a software program, for generating various types of audit reports pertaining to various aspects of the replacement rental vehicle reservation business chain. Examples of such audit reports include repair facility audit reports, rental company audit reports, and purchaser audit reports, as described in greater detail hereinafter. Through the use of such audit reports, purchasers or other interested parties can make “apples to apples”-type comparisons between data for different reservations due to the systematic business rules disclosed herein.
Further still, according to another aspect of a preferred embodiment of the present invention, disclosed herein is a technique for providing parties such as purchasers and repair facilities with a plurality of graphical user interface (GUI) screens through which they can custom-define the business rules used to automate the computation of term-related parameters for the reservations with which they are involved.
While the principal advantages and features of several embodiments of the invention have been discussed above, a greater understanding of the invention including a fuller description of its other advantages and features may be attained by referring to the drawings and the detailed description of the preferred embodiment which follow.